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Emergency Neurological Life Support: Approach to the Patient with Coma
Robert D Stevens1, Rhonda S Cadena2, Jose Pineda3
1Departments of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine; Neurology; Neurosurgery; and Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. rstevens@jhmi.edu.
Abstract:
Coma is an acute failure of neuronal systems governing arousal and awareness and represents a medical emergency. When encountering a comatose patient, the clinician must have an organized approach to detect easily remediable causes, prevent ongoing neurologic injury, and determine a hierarchical plan for diagnostic tests, treatments, and neuromonitoring. Coma was chosen as an Emergency Neurological Life Support protocol because timely medical and surgical interventions can be life-saving, and the initial work-up of such patients is critical to establishing a correct diagnosis.
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